Google said today that the reason itâ€™s showing more links is because usability testing revealed that many people didnâ€™t realize there was additional local content available beyond the three listings, despite the â€œmore results . . .â€ prompt. Accordingly, Google said that with the 10 links it is hoping to signal people that there is much more local content a click away.

The ranking of those ten results is based on a range of factors, including the query, proximity, availability of ratings/reviews and their quality and several other variables.

Google also said that it wouldnâ€™t always show 10 results; it might still show three sometimes or one if the query is very specific.

I read “people didnâ€™t realize there was additional local content available beyond the three listings” to mean that Google is striving for more Maps traffic in their competitive maps battle. It will be interesting to look at the Hitwise data to see if there is a similar increase to last year when the Local OneBox was upgraded.

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Yes it will give 10 businesses a chance to be on that front page. Since we don’t know exactly how people will use it, it is unclear to me the benefit. Would love to have call tracking of calls directly from the Google Main results page, no? Glad others are seeing these results too….I was beginning to feel like the boy that cried wolf 🙂

Yes as you can see in my next post accuracy issues are clearly visible in these results….

I wonder if the “missing reviews” are a response to a “changing business relationship” with CitySearch and Yelp….both of whose reviews are no longer in the results. Perhaps Google found that their own reviews were a reason for those entities to part ways?

Good question. I would have suggested the Local OneBox Squared ( 3 x 3 is almost 10) but it is too hard for me to do in HTML 🙂

We have the “power” to make the history of the english language…ooooh this is intoxicating, no? :)….as the Local 10 box implies to me that the OneBox has one entry…how about the Expanded Local OneBox? (aka the ELOB)…. another possibility: Local OneBox 2.0 (aka LOBv2).